Calculated Risk – 1963 | 72 mins | Crime | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Above average low-budget crime drama with bags of tension as the perfect robbery begins to go awry. William Lucas is the pugnacious lead but sadly the rest of the characters aren’t so well drawn.

It’s deep winter and England is enduring the ‘big freeze’, meanwhile career-crook, Kip Walton (John Rutland), is released from prison. A locksmith with a lengthy record, rather than going straight he decides to do one more break in; a bank job planned by a fellow prison inmate who has since passed away. He approaches his brother-in-law, Steve (William Lucas), with the idea, but failed crook Kip is regarded as a ‘Jonah’ and his relative takes over preparations and sets about recruiting a gang. Irishman Dodo O’Donnell (Shay Gorman) is recruited to handle the explosives and tunneller Nodge (Terence Cooper) and getaway driver Ron (David Brierly) complete the gang.

The crooks plan to tunnel through the cellars of a bombsite into a neighbouring bank vault. The plan begins to unravel when Kip is incapacitated by a heart condition, and worsens when they encounter an unexploded Second World War bomb.